HP OpenVMS Systems

COBOL COMP and DECforms?

During porting of a Cobol application from a VAX 4505 to an Alpha I have
encountered problems with record lengths between the source code and the
DECform as indicated by the error message.
The fields are defined as follows:
Cobol Source Code
01 SCREEN1-REC.
05 S1-COB-SWITCHES PIC X.
05 S1-KEY1.
10 S1-PROC-DATE PIC 9(18) COMP.
05 SCREEN_MESSAGE PIC X(80).

The Answer is :

COBOL V2.4, V2.5, and V2.6 are no longer supported by HP Engineering.
The OpenVMS Wizard strongly encourages you to upgrade to the current
COBOL release and to the current ECO kit -- as of this writing, that
combinbation would be Compaq COBOL V2.7 with COBOLAE1027ECO2.
When you use DECforms with COBOL, the following are the recommended
compilation options:
$ FORMS TRANSLATE/MEMBER_ALIGNMENT/PAD_RECORDS
$ COBOL/ALIGNMENT=PADDING
If you still need to do debugging in your application of the data
layout and the match between DECforms and COBOL, please use:
$ COBOL/ALIGNMENT=PADDING/LIST/MAP
to determine the details of how COBOL is aligning the data in your
applications. For details on the OpenVMS calling standard and how
it applies to a particular call, please see the calling standard
documentation in the documentation set and please also use the
debugger to examine the contents of the registers and the stack.